Largest canyon in the solar system revealed in stunning new images

Just for the record the US also created a full "3D" physical (IRL) map of mars, way back in the 1970s, meticulously stitching together individual photos that came back from very slowly from satellite feeds, then carefully laid out on a giant globe like surface which they could study the planet surface in detail.

The "vast channel system" naturally piqued early NASA researchers interest and if I'm not mistaken it goes nearly all the way around the equator of Mars. This and other geographical features led to the early idea of melting water flows on mars millions of years ago creating grooves and valleys, not just from volcanic activity.

So this is far from "new" news. It's just getting way more modern research with way better hardware (thanks to 12yrs of HIRISE data).

I'm mostly paraphrasing this from watching an old video of the NASA funded project on YouTube where they did what HIRISE is doing with way more primitive tech and old computer terminals.

Edit: I found it, "The Planet Mars (1979)": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZzY8-nxabA

(Highly recommended watch, it shows original feeds of old badass NASA nerds working together on the lander. In one scene it shows a computer slowly getting a photo print out from the actual satellites on a terminal screen, with the team getting giddy at seeing these shots beaming directly from space).

>"About 87 million miles (140 million kilometers) above the Grand Canyon, an even larger, grander abyss cuts through the gut of the Red Planet. Known as

Valles Marineris

, this system of deep, vast canyons runs more than 2,500 miles (4,000 km) along the Martian equator, spanning nearly a quarter of the planet's circumference. This gash in the bedrock of Mars is nearly

10 times as long as Earth's Grand Canyon and three times deeper

, making it the single largest canyon in the solar system"

> the Red Planet is too hot and dry to have ever accommodated a river large enough to slash through the crust like that

May want to proof-read this.